It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
Don't sleep on the Milwaukee Brewers this year y'all. Up and down the lineup -- and even on the
bench. The pitching staff isn't all that bad either. Defense might be an issue however.
Tuesday, 4 April 2017 at 2h 29m 47s
My new Baseball Rant
This is starting to get fun. I would like to add imported pictures, video, and stats to my
comments, but that takes time. I got the skills and the software, but again, culling the various
data and using the video software is time consuming. In general, assume 5 minutes of raw video
takes 20 minutes of back ground work, depending upon the amount of addition. And the time it takes
to process is not insignificant either, except that when you are processing you don't have to be
engaged. The process is quicker once you set up templates, but you still have to cull and organize
what you put in the placeholders.
But that is my eventual goal. For now, I am satisfied with the raw unedited video footage of myself
mouthing off about baseball. My second love. :-)
By the way, Youtube has gotten a lot better with their upload user interface. OMG it used to be a
pain as those of you who know will attest. Now, you just open the upload dialogue, drag and drop,
and type in the words and preferences while the video uploads. The new video manager window is also
now tremendously awesome and very easy to navigate. Thanks Youtube-Google.
Sunday, 2 April 2017 at 16h 9m 15s
Napster's Fantasy Baseball Rant
Alright y'all, I want to start making video's of me discussing baseball and fantasy baseball related
topics. I will try to do this daily or at least a few times a week for the next 26 weeks. That is
my goal.
Saturday, 25 March 2017 at 3h 26m 24s
Working yourself to death is soooooo cool
It does require a fairly dystopian strain of doublethink for a company to celebrate how hard and how
constantly its employees must work to make a living, given that these companies are themselves
setting the terms. And yet this type of faux-inspirational tale has been appearing more lately, both
in corporate advertising and in the news. Fiverr, an online freelance marketplace that promotes
itself as being for “the lean entrepreneur”—as its name suggests, services advertised on Fiverr can
be purchased for as low as five dollars—recently attracted ire for an ad campaign called “In Doers
We Trust.” One ad, prominently displayed on some New York City subway cars, features a woman staring
at the camera with a look of blank determination. “You eat a coffee for lunch,” the ad proclaims.
“You follow through on your follow through. Sleep deprivation is your drug of choice. You might be a
doer.”
Fiverr, which had raised a hundred and ten million dollars in venture capital by November, 2015, has
more about the “In Doers We Trust” campaign on its Web site. In one video, a peppy female voice-over
urges “doers” to “always be available,” to think about beating “the trust-fund kids,” and to pitch
themselves to everyone they see, including their dentist. A Fiverr press release about “In Doers We
Trust” states, “The campaign positions Fiverr to seize today’s emerging zeitgeist of entrepreneurial
flexibility, rapid experimentation, and doing more with less. It pushes against bureaucratic
overthinking, analysis-paralysis, and excessive whiteboarding.” This is the jargon through which the
essentially cannibalistic nature of the gig economy is dressed up as an aesthetic. No one wants to
eat coffee for lunch or go on a bender of sleep deprivation—or answer a call from a client while
having sex, as recommended in the video. It’s a stretch to feel cheerful at all about the Fiverr
marketplace, perusing the thousands of listings of people who will record any song, make any
happy-birthday video, or design any book cover for five dollars. I’d guess that plenty of the people
who advertise services on Fiverr would accept some “whiteboarding” in exchange for
employer-sponsored health insurance.
At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to
applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself
to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric
(everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to
exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking
especially clear. Human-interest stories about the beauty of some person standing up to the
punishments of late capitalism are regular features in the news, too. I’ve come to detest the
local-news set piece about the man who walks ten or eleven or twelve miles to work—a story that’s
been filed from Oxford, Alabama; from Detroit, Michigan; from Plano, Texas. The story is always
written as a tearjerker, with praise for the person’s uncomplaining attitude; a car is usually
donated to the subject in the end. Never mentioned or even implied is the shamefulness of a job that
doesn’t permit a worker to afford his own commute.
There’s a painful distance between the chipper narratives surrounding labor and success in America
and the lived experience of workers.
[SOURCE:Jia Tolentino | The New Yorker
| 22 March 2017]
Hail the psuedo-hero who genuflects to the chiseled and enhanced stereotype. Worshiping these
survivors of the post New Deal working class is getting ludicrous.
Hello. Prostitutes and gang members are also "entrepreneurs" . If you don't perceive the
aggregate health of the overall economic system, then you describe the deterioration as something
that is beneficial to your own paradigm. Thus desperate people clinging to the erratic social
system as best they deem or find possible, are called "entrepreneurs" rather than desperate
survivors trying to make ends meet as best their individual lives can provide within their mindset
or circumstances.
Friday, 24 March 2017 at 2h 24m 17s
What
What?
What is that?
What did you say?
Did you say that you wanted something other than what?
What?
What is this what?
Does is mean W ... HAT?
A hat you wear in almighty honor to the letter W.
Or is it WH ... AT.
Where are you AT?
Are you somewhere other than here?
What the Fuck?
Here
where you are there
or maybe everywhere.
It's just what you want that makes you what you are.
Friday, 24 March 2017 at 2h 27m 2s
Spring Training stats
Those of you who know me, know that I am an avid baseball nerd. Once baseball season starts my soul
is sync'ed into baseball every single day. And not just one team. I can give you info on all 30
teams in the league. I am somewhat partial to the Giants, but that doesn't come at the expense of
the other 29 teams in the league. I just love baseball. It is the best sport that combines
individual achievement with team other than basketball. Football is too player dependent, and too
limited in the number of games, in my opinion to appeal to me. Nothing against football, mind you.
Give me 30 more games maybe, and I'd be on board.
As such, I play fantasy baseball. I have been playing every year since ... I think 2006. I win
every single year. I have not lost any roto league ever. In weekly leagues, I have won every
single league, except once when I lost in the final game of the playoffs, and took 2nd place. I
don't say this to brag, but to reinforce the fact that I know my fucking shit when it comes to baseball.
So March is Spring Training month for baseball. Thing is that Spring Training hero's very often do
not translate into regular season studs. Every year some dude just gets hot, or takes advantage of
the environment and looks like a superstar. You cannot think the next best thing will be every
single dude who has an awesome Spring Training because the accumulated data over the last umpteen
score years indicates otherwise. The key is to know the difference. What statistics and data
should we rely upon to determine how likely a Spring Training superstar actually indicates a
relevant condition that will produce an excellent regular season.
For me, when it comes to pitchers I look at the Strikeout to Walks Ratio. I sort the MLB Spring
Training stats by strikeouts
and scroll down (without looking at the names). I only look at the name of anyone with an excellent
K-BB ratio. Then I think about that pitcher, and consider whether this is a potential indicator of
future success. Is the pitcher in the National League where pitchers hit? Is there a good defense
behind the pitcher? Who is the pitching coach? Did the pitcher develop or improve on a new pitch or
pitching repertoire? Regardless of these questions -- because you can talk yourself into anything --
this subgroup of pitchers has a much higher likelihood of future success so you are better off
taking a chance from these pitchers.
For the hitters, I look at a few more data points, but mostly I trust the Walks to Strikeouts ratio,
because for hitters, having a good eye is the quintessential need for future success. Foremost, a
hitter who isn't helping the pitcher get him out will have a higher Batting Average, in addition to
other counting stats. With hitters however, the potential for steals, spot in the batting order,
the potency of the other hitters in the lineup, and even the ball park are also relevant factors.
So in this case, I use the Walks to Strikeout ratio more as a backstop or check off. So in my view
of things, a good hitter in a good situation with a poor ratio is a notch less than a good hitter in
a mediocre situation with an impressive ratio.
Sunday, 19 March 2017 at 3h 16m 0s
Echidne is a greek goddess indeed
In case you are not aware, Echidne is a blogger who has a quite incisive instinct for the gestalt of
the zeitgeist (Whoa man, two German words). I visit Echidne on a regular basis,
because the information and insight is both amusing and accurate.
Jane Mayer has written an excellent and important piece about the longer-term consequences of the
Citizens United Supreme Court decision which gave every dollar the same political power. Most of us
could foresee what that might mean: The very rich can now legally buy almost any administration
they wish and create almost any laws they want.
And Mayer shows us, very carefully, how that led to Trump and the large number of white supremacists
and possibly even a Nazi or two in his administration. These shadowy super-billionaires Mayer
writes about, using Mercer as her example, are the true deep "state" in the United States, our true
overlords.
Granted, we still have voting for the hoi polloi, though it's more and more restricted for the black
Americans every day. But if you think of voting somewhat like picking a meal in a restaurant,
remember that it's people like Mercer who wrote the menu, who decided what dishes should be on it.
Click here for the Jane Mayer piece. Jane Mayer is no slouch herself. She has
been a reputable journalist for the New Yorker since 1995.
Saturday, 18 March 2017 at 18h 50m 55s
14 Standard Deviations.
In fact, the aggregate wealth of Japan, is somewhere between 3 and 4 standard deviations. So WTF Mr.
Ryan? I realize you had a few brews back in college salivating over destroying government, but why
didn't you give back those tawdry Social Security payments after your father died, back in the day
when you too were a young man in need of a little help? Tell us, Mr. Ryan, why do you indulge in the
suffering of others behind a bunk philosophy?
In case you were unaware, in statistics, 3 standard deviations is the extreme for a normal
distribution of items that have
relatively similar characteristics and background enviromental influences. For a normal
distribution, 99.7 percent of all items will be within a 3 standard deviation interval. To be 14
standard deviations from the mean, is akin to a billion year global event.